Long considered an icon of the American Southwest, the coyote is now a wildlife resident of most rural towns and urban areas. Why has this particular animal been able to thrive at the same time human development threatens so many other native species? A look at the coyote's natural evolutionary advantages tells an interesting story of wildlife in modern society. Coyote Background Coyotes are part of the Canis designation of mammals, the same category as wolves, dogs … [Read more...]
The Leatherback Sea Turtles of Trinidad
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In the early morning darkness, all along Trinidad's northeastern beaches, a mysterious ritual takes place every year. Here, giant leatherback turtles, some over six feet long and weighing half a ton, roll in on the ocean waves and start climbing the sloping shore. Anxious locals wait for them. Their dimmed headlights further illuminating the shimmering wetness of the turtles leathery skin. The turtles crawl slowly along the beach, pulling their huge bodies over the … [Read more...]
5 Amazing Sea Creatures
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Oceans cover approximately 72 percent of the Earth's surface and the deepest point, at the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, is around seven miles. Only a tiny fraction of the Earth's oceans have been explored and, in fact, we know a great deal more about the surface of Mars than these regions of our own world. Oceanographers are constantly discovering new species of sea life, particularly far beneath the surface in the deepest, darkest depths of the oceans. Here are … [Read more...]
Niko Tinbergen: Biologist of the 20th Century
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Niko Tinbergen was a Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine (1973), a zoologist who published what is considered the first handbook on ethology, a prisoner of the Nazi army in The Netherlands and later a lecturer of ethology at the Oxford University. Dr. Nikolass Tinbergen passed away on the 21st of December 1988 in Oxford, England. Nikolass or 'Niko', as he was popularly known, was born in The Hague in The Netherlands in 1907 as the third of the five children … [Read more...]
